


Mushroom Mayhem

by TeleportPublishing



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Based on a dumb gag from a challenge video but then I ended up putting too much work into this, Don't eat the red caps kids, Drug Use, Euphemistic language to describe a high, Gen, Hallucinations, Hot Guys Vomiting Blood, Insanity, Maxwell is mentioned but he doesn't appear in the story or anything, Same deal with Charlie, Vomiting, Wilson isn't a survivalist, Wilson lives rent free in my brain, Written at 1 AM, no actual sexual content tho, shrooms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:33:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26763652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeleportPublishing/pseuds/TeleportPublishing
Summary: The constant is a weird place, and Wilson is trying his best to understand.Or, in other words, the blue mushrooms do funny things to your brain.(Written by Typow hehe)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	Mushroom Mayhem

The butterfly fluttered through the air, making lazy sweeping loops from flower to flower. It was abnormally large; most butterflies are small and dainty, not the size of one’s own hand. And yet, its grace remained, allowing it to achieve its magnificent swirls of flight. It slowly landed on a rose, unfurled its tongue, and was promptly cut in half.

With a single swift motion, the axe had cut the poor insect clean in two, proceeding to sail onward until the head was buried into the ground. Wilson watched in awe at the sheer might this axe had given him. He had never been good with large, unwieldy tools, and now he had killed something with a single blow. Granted, it was a butterfly, but it was a start. He wrenched the axe from the ground, letting dirt tumble off the clean blade as he stooped down to collect his spoils. 

He’d arrived in this strange land a little less than a week ago, and he was already learning so much. After his… experience with the magician, he had awoken on rough grass in the wilderness. Wilson was no soft aristocrat, like his parents, but he was a gentleman, and survival was not something he was well suited for. He had spent his first handful of moments immediately breaking into a panic, which ended up being unhelpful. After some deep breaths and a stern mental reminder that he was a proper young lad who had no business crying out at the sky, he got to work. Doing what? Why, science of course!

The first step was observation. Wilson had wandered around, taking in all the scenery. He was in a wooded area; flowers, carrots, scattered pebbles, grass tufts, and twiggy and berry bushes alike clogged the spare ground underneath the pine trees. It was comforting and overwhelming to be surrounded with so many resources, especially if one has barely any idea of how to use them. Wilson had spent the day picking everything up, finding every bit of spare room in his vest and pockets to stuff a handful of flint next to a bundle of twigs. He even picked a rose, letting out a small yelp when the thorns unexpectedly pierced his skin. It was a small prickle, really, and so he had gently placed the rose in his breast pocket and carried on, easily ignoring the tiniest scratch on his finger. 

He had dragged over some spare logs lying on the ground and made a campfire well before night had hit. All it took was a twig to cook the meager fruits and veggies he had found. Wilson was startled by his own calm at being in such a scary and unfamiliar setting, and yet, the calm did not disperse after the moment of startle. He knew that objectively, he couldn’t survive for very long. He had no idea how to procure food and shelter and luxury items; he just always had them delivered. Send in a fanciful script about needing such and such for his scientific studies, take the longest walk to the mailbox, wait a couple of days, and then spy through the window at the mailman hiking up his driveway to wheeze on his doorstep and clack the knocker against the door. That was his social interaction for the month, and his supplies for the month, and he would pay with backlogged checks from his parents who had stopped sending anything weeks and weeks ago. It would all crumble eventually, but Wilson had hoped that a major scientific breakthrough would be the event to save him from his fate, not being kidnapped and left to rot in the elements.

Night descended so much darker than back home, although Wilson foolishly chalked it up to the new moon. He sat by his fire, letting the glow warm his skin as he stared melancholically at the small wound he had gotten earlier. He pulled the berries he was roasting off the open flame and chewed slowly. They were very sweet, and strangely, he could almost feel the berries quenching the hunger already gnawing at his sides. Wilson looked down to inspect the small red spot again, only to find himself doing a double take. It was gone.

Wilson gaped at the smooth bit of skin on his finger in disbelief. He has to test the theory already snowballing in his mind. He grabbed the rose from his pocket and pricked himself with it again, this time merely letting his shoulder jump slightly at the pain. He then ate a carrot from the spit, watching the new injury with curious eyes. The dot closed up and healed all on its own, as if by magic. Hmph, magic. The very thing that had gotten him into this mess. The berries and carrot that Wilson had eaten suddenly dropped like stones to the bottom of his stomach. Wait. Magic. If this world was magical, that meant that he wasn’t just stranded on some exotic coast away from civilization. He must be trapped in a world of the wicked magician's creation. The excitement from his little food discovery was snuffed out like a dying flame, which Wilson mimicked as he extinguished his own fire in order to get some sleep. He had to shake off the awful truth he had uncovered.

The moment his campfire was out, the darkness rushed in like a heavy curtain. Wilson had never been afraid of the dark, but then again, he had never felt it this close before. And he could feel it; standing all around him, squeezing him with a painful grip, sending a light whooshing noise careening through his head. He spun around, unable to stop himself from blurting out, “What was that?!”

Then he felt something- no, someone else. They stood right in front of him, leaning in and slowly wrapping their jaws around his arm. Wilson frantically scrambled to relight the fire, flames bursting in front of his eyes as the thing bit down on him, sending pain exploding through his limb. Wilson screamed the first thing that came to his mind, “OW! Something bit me!” It was an idiotic thing to yell and he knew it, and yet that was the only thing he could focus on. Back in the light of the fire, Wilson examined his forearm, which indeed had been punctured, the wounds from what looked like a bite. A horrific black goo dripped from the holes, like a dog’s leftover saliva. Wilson finally let panic settle back in. He was going to die out here. 

And all of it was to amuse Maxwell the magnificent. 

Days had passed since then, and Wilson had found tasks to steel his mind towards. Firstly, the matter of supplies. He had managed to use the spare flint and twigs around to make some basic tools, which is how he found himself busting open a gold veined rock, which is how he found himself making a basic electrical current, which is how he found himself making a science machine. It was a tricky process, costing him another full day, but now he had brought order to this chaotic death trap. Now, he could truly observe. 

Find some reed near the clean edge of a forest grass giving way to marshlands? Make the paper. A raven decided to fall asleep a bit too unfortunately close to his base during the third night? Make the pen. And with notes at his side, Wilson felt able to accomplish anything. He decided to start by listing everything that made this place different from back home; catalog the oddities that plagued his new day to day life. While the waist high spiders, aggressive night demon, and lack of civilized society were all plenty evil enough to spend hours rant-writing about, Wilson was most fascinated by how food seemed to work here.

Food was no longer a thing to eat to keep away hunger pains; it was the thing to base your entire life around. Food warmed you, it healed you, it instantaneously filled you with energy. The magic behind this was endlessly fascinating to the gentleman scientist. He began a list of which foods were the most and least helpful in terms of curing wounds and filling his rapidly shriveling belly. The first bump in the road came when Wilson decided to eat one of the red mushrooms that seemed to always be sprouting up. 

He had eaten it slowly to gauge if it was safe, noting the sharp, almost pepper like taste and crunch. It tasted alright, all things considered, and Wilson noticed his hunger receding slightly, meaning it worked in terms of food. He was about to continue when a burning sensation flared in his stomach, stopping him and making him double over, hands rushing to hold his sides. The white hot pain ricocheted up his throat and burst through his mouth, copper red blood splattering against the ground as Wilson violently threw up. His fingers scraped against tree bark in a grim effort to keep himself standing as the visceral reaction seemed to stop as quickly as it began. With a shaky hand, he used his already dirty sleeve to clean the blood from his lips, forcing his eyes to divert from the puddle left on the ground. That night, Wilson made a bolded note to never, EVER, eat the red caps.

It was the study of such things that led the scientist to the moment he was currently in, slicing at butterflies, wondering what healing or hurting properties their delicate wings would have on his system. Nothing could be worse than the hell that was the day sprouting mushroom, so he shoved the severed bug in his mouth without a second thought. A scrape on his leg cleared up instantly, although he didn’t feel any more full. He made a note that butterflies seemed to be good exclusively for healing, not eating. Still, in a world as dangerous as this one, healing was always welcome. 

Wilson gripped his axe and bounded through the butterfly heavy fields, slashing away. He had been surprised to wake up a couple days prior and find himself growing a rather short beard, although he decided to leave it be. He felt guilty for struggling to maintain his gentlemanly manor, but the harshness of his terrain was breaking him down more quickly than he had anticipated. The lack of human contact was manageable, at least, however, the idea of waking up every day and spending it just trying to make it to the next day was quickly growing grim. He should try to do something fun, he thinks, but there is no free time to do it. Not unless he wants to die. Oh, how this life did not suit him! Oh, how he longs for a proper workshop, not a spot of dirt with a whirring machine and a small stone fire pit!

Dusk arrived without the poor survivor even realizing, too engrossed in the mind numbing task of killing a creature so easy to dominate. It wasn’t until the sight of his hands started rapidly vanishing from his gaze that Wilson finally broke out of his trance and hurriedly fumbled with his supplies to light up a quick travel torch. He snatched a final insect carcass from the grass and hurried along, praying that he would reach his camp before the torch burned itself out, so he could light up a proper fire and get some rest. He scrambled along the small dirt road he had found and had been following earlier, eager to escape the close proximity dance he found himself trapped in with the darkness. He was sure that the fire pit’s stones were gleaming with torch light when he found himself distracted by a faint blue out of the corner of his eye.

Damn his infernal curiosity! Damn his newfound obsession with food! Damn his weak and foolish mind! Damn his entire body for stopping to look at a simple blue mushroom! And yet, despite trying to trap himself with damnation, Wilson stopped and examined the fungus. He knew that he should leave it behind, remember how awful the red mushroom was? And yet, with an air of finality that was so certain it almost frightened him, Wilson ripped the roots of it clean from the ground and continued his scurry home. He threw the torch into the fire pit, letting its last bits of wood serve as a fire starter for the fuel he had left in there previously. He collapsed next to it, settling in for a bad and restless night’s sleep. 

Wilson awoke angry with himself, and also slightly taken aback by the anger from himself, wondering what he did to cause it. His hand brushed the slightly mushy and damp object beside him. Ah, yes, that was it. Risk his life for a mushroom that will probably also kill him, Brilliant move there! He stared at the little blue cap with much contempt as he fetched his note taking supplies. On the slight chance that different colors on mushrooms changed what they did, in addition to when they grew during the day, he had to test it. He had been eyeing green caps each evening, but this mushroom’s striking color and strange blooming habits had overwhelmed his sense of trepidation. For science he muttered internally to himself, as he bit into the blue.

He immediately noticed that his stiff shoulders and creaky back from sleeping on uneven ground seemed to melt away, and the normal clawing monster of hunger that joined him each morning after a long sleep was slightly pushed back. A mushroom that heals and is filling? A brilliant discovery! Worth almost dying at night. Actually, most definitely worth it. Wilson polished off the mushroom arrogantly, proud of such an unexpected triumph. He put blue caps at the top of his list, and then stood and dusted himself off, ready to go tackle the new issues of the day. 

Wilson was about to take a hearty swing at a tree to refuel his fire pit fuel when he suddenly was extremely aware of the air around him. It felt… wrong to slice it when his real beef was with the tree. Why hurt all that innocent oxygen just for firewood? He let the axe slip out of his hands, using them instead to mop his unreasonably sweaty brow. He felt awkward and embarrassed, apologizing several times out loud to the air. He kept his eyes closed, trying to focus on breathing, and when he opened them, the tree in front of him felt impossibly green. Like, way too green. Wilson tried to take a step back and fell over. He covered his head with his hands. Who had swapped the trees? Who had pushed him over? Why was he so sweaty? 

The survivor tried to peek through his trembling limbs, only to find the world distorting around him, light bending, warping, refracting just to touch him. The sky… it must be thanking him for not cutting it earlier. How many days ago was that? It had to be at least before he got here, right? A wind blew through, the sweat pooling around him turning freezing cold. He muttered useless and incoherent thanks to the sky and the wind and the bright green trees. Wilson rolled onto his back, letting his vision fill with cyan. Wow, it's nice that he and the lovely kingdom of clouds are spending time together. The gentleman burst into tears, moved by the affection shown towards him. He stumbled upwards, somehow managing to stand upright, despite the entire ground softly shifting back and forth, like the deck on a ship. Wilson swayed with it, letting the peaceful wind melody guide him forward, a roundabout march towards nothing. His fingers raked down his arms, sending little snakes of uncomfortably high pleasure wherever he traced. The trees were bending in and out, the colorful animals around him cheerful, the sky loudly singing for him, and hey, since when were there bright pink lions out here, anyhow?

Wilson let his eyes grow misty and unfocused, his pupils expanding to dinner plates, his mind jellified and docile. At the faintest reaches of his memory, he managed to connect what was happening to prior experiences, prior evidence, in his life. He knew why the uppity people he was forced to associate with would stand around puffing on smelly cigars and burning through cases of cigarettes and drowning in bottle after bottle of alcohol. That pleasant numbing feeling of a high, allowing you to coast through even the most awkward of dinner parties, was enough to hide the fact that you hated your life. But this was different. This was no mere high. Whatever was in that mushroom was powerful, warping his mind and filling it with pure and utter nonsense. Wilson wandered like that for untold eons, unable to focus on anything but how great everything was to look at, to listen to, to touch. Every note the breeze licked into his ears, every bright color that kissed his eyes, every brush of a leaf like a molten feeling of ecstasy dripping through his core. 

Lucidity returned to him when he found himself splayed out in a large grassy field. His head was pounding, like he had spent the past day swatting at face bound mosquitoes with a hammer. The once happy animals that played in the edges of his eyes had decayed, leaving shadows that pulled at the fringes of his mind, teasing him with the promise of unraveling it. Whispers of insanity and tall watching creatures now stood around him, and hunger had returned to him, a single blue mushroom not at all being a proper breakfast. It was hot out, his legs were sore, his brain was melting, his insides felt hollow and life draining. And so Wilson got up, teetering from side to side for a moment, before continuing his weary quest for food. Nightfall came soon afterwards, forcing a temporary campfire to rest at until Wilson could find his real base tomorrow. He stared at the flames, his still bleary eyes and frazzled brain liking the simple and bright thing to focus on. Through the sludge left in his madness’s wake, a thought trudged along, hoping to reach him.

Wilson really wanted to do that again.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are greatly appreciated!


End file.
